Grand 3

I really needed this vacation because I had a rough couple of days the previous week at work involving lots of heavy lifting and table moving. My favorite bruise was this puppy from walking side-on into a wheeled cart. Whoops. 

Two weeks later, just starting to brown. Cool!

The bench at the shuttle stop had some impromptu horse art.

This morning we woke up to a 12 point buck hanging out near our campsite. He was using his antlers to lodge into low branches and swinging his head back and forth to break off the branch and eat the leaves. His antlers were enormous! We watched him for twenty minutes probably.

We wanted to get to an early start because this was the day of our below the rim hike. We chose the Bright Angel Trail and walked down to the 3-mile rest stop. The way down was a good 3 times faster than the way back up. We saw some mules working, Grace got made fun of by a cowboy (twice), met lots of cool people, and watched a lightning storm in the distance near the end of it.

It's so steep, the path zigs back and forth. Most of it is loosely pathed out, but there's still some fun rock climbing and sliding.

MULE.

The landscape changes the lower you get and it was so wicked to see the rocks up close and from different angles. Water breaks meant camera breaks. Stay hydrated!

This area reminded us of the Land Before Time. It basically is. 

Seriously, so cool. 

Post-6-mile hike shot!!! Let's just say we were sweaty. 

Proud hikers!

We had absolute perfect timing with the weather. It started to drizzle as soon as we were on the shuttle back to the campgrounds. We decided to wait out the storm at the lodge and chilled there with some magazines and naps for a couple hours. For dinner we made really good beans and tortilla soup and played old card games, which was a lot of fun.  #elkproblems also started.